every little literary thought

Menu

david mitchell

I just wrote a post about David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green, and I wanted to share some of my favorite quotes from the novel, narrated by a 13-year-old boy in a small village in 1980s England.

“Once a poem’s left home it doesn’t care about you.”

“Me, I want to bloody kick this moronic bloody world in the bloody teeth over and over till it bloody understands that not hurting people is ten bloody thousand times more bloody important than being right.”

“People’re a nestful of needs. Dull needs, sharp needs, bottomless-put needs, flash-in-the-pan needs, needs for things you can’t hold, needs for things you can. Adverts know this. Shops know this. Specially in arcades, shops’re deafening. I’ve got what you want! I’ve got what you want! I’ve got what you want! But waking down Regents Arcade this afternoon, I noticed a new need that’s normal so close-up you never know it’s there. You and your mom need to like each other. Not love, but like.”